SC4/Stage 9: The Castle Gold Room
Dracula's treasures from the past stored here. There's a good thing about this stage: most of the candles in this stage contains money bags which will give you bonus points. There's also a bad thing: the first part of the stage also has platforms that deteriorate after you land on them, so be careful when on these platforms. (Click to enlarge image) 1. There's a bat that will dive down to push you into the nearby cliff. defeat the bat quickly. You'll also have to face Gold-colored Skeletons that can take more hits to defeat. 2. If you're good enough you can move to the deteriorating platforms, you can reach the candles containing special items. 3. Once again, be careful when trekking through this system of deteriorating platforms. Be sure to jump to if you are to make it to the other side. 4. If you're good enough, you can use your whip to latch onto the floating rings, by making it across, you'll find some good items hidden inside the candles. 5. After crossing the second system of Deteriorating Platforms, be mindful of the bat and gold skeleton that throws bones at you, they can knock you off the platform, and with no other platform to fall back on (more or less) you'll lose a life. Be sure to defeat them before they get near to you. 6. After defeating the Skeledragon, you can try again at using the floating rings to swing to the small platform on the far side, though there are only 2 candles. 7. Defeat this Skeledragon to obtain a small Chicken Leg and some hearts, then go down the stair case to the next area. 8. Like the tree sap from the Mad Forest stage, you'll find some unstable piles of gold. It may sound fun to bathe in this stuff, but keep in mind that you'll lose a life if you sink into it. 9. Use your whip on a floating ring and swing onto the higher ledge and go down the staircase into the next area. 10. Be mindful of the falling stones as they'll crush you as well as provide safe passage through the field of spikes. On the other side, be careful of the snapping caskets and the small stalagmites that have vacuum holes. 11. One of these vacuum holes will lead you into a hidden room full of goodies such as big hearts, big Chicken Legs as well as sub-weapons. You don't have to worry about enemies, just vacuum holes that take you back to the regular stage. 12. In this area, you'll face gold-colored skeletons as well as Skeledragons that will turn into Money Bags when defeated. Continue going up and towards the boss. Zapf Bat This is a boss that consist of gold and takes on a form of a bat. The Zapf Bat intially doesn't do very much, but every time it gets hit, chunks of gold and jewels will fly off and can hit you, though it doesn't do much damage. On an occasion, the Bat will swoop down to attack you, move far away from the boss to avoid it when it does. Once you wear it down, it splits into 3 smaller bats which fly faster and smaller to hit and even drop gold coins on you. If you have the Boomerang, it'll be easier to hit the smaller bats.